Below is a table depicting our headings and subheadings. Items in italics are links to other headings. Green items are main headings. The red item, For Starters will be kind of a choose your own adventure type of thing (ask questions, where user goes depends on answers to questions). We may change heading names (any ideas -- let me know) to more catchy names.

We decided to use Nick's idea for the design. We will have a game controller with what looks like a computer or television screen behind it where text will appear. User will use the game controller to proceed through the site (use inline frame???).The links to headings will bring up a new browser window so that the user can always get back to the main screen (and also so that the controller doesn't take away too much from space for text).

Specs: We will design for 800x600 resolution, 4.0 and above browsers, and 16 bit color.

Company Contact Progress: (all companies must be contacted by 3/10 and all interviews must be conducted by 3/26) ** this has been delayed

Interviews

First off, all companies have been contacted, so the table above has been updated. However, companies have not been responsive. He will email again, and I suggested that he get phone #s and just try calling and asking around until he gets the right person.

Controller Prototype/ First Page Design

Elizabeth finished her prototype and we like how it looks. We have decided though, that the headings text will not appear to the right as in her drawing. We will instead make the controller larger allowing for graphic buttons to be larger so you can tell what they are (we will do away with a list of the headings all together). On the controller, a graphic for each heading will appear. When you put your mouse over the button, we want text to appear to the side telling what that area is. When you click on the button, it takes you to that page. Here are the graphics we decided to use for the headings:

Page Navigation starting w/second page

After the first main page, the main page will not stay as we had originally planned, and no 2nd window will open. Instead, on every page after the main page, we will have a top navigational bar with an image map of top tabs (somewhat like on amazon.com and many other pages) with the main heading names on each tab and maybe the graphic beside it?

For Starters

Nick has a prototype of how he will handle the for starters navigation using javascript, which we hope to get working on both IE and Netscape. It detects what type of browser you are using and will give an error message if you're not using a java enabled browser. Remember, we're designing for 4.0 and above. Nick is thinking about using a cookie to keep track of the areas a user goes to when going through the for starters area and using it to add points which will tell the user how likely he or she is to earn more money based on their interest in their career areas. An alien guide along the way??

Research

So far, we have some schools, information on starting a videogame career, profile of a game designer, information on animation and computer graphics, some myths, game distribution, and a little research on some of the companies we plan on interviewing.

We still need a lot more information. Some of the next places to look are: specific game academies and also universities (names and locations as well as program information), salary surveys and job/career sites such as chicagojobs.com and headhunter.com, bios on game company sites, skills listed on job postings, etc.

Game Controller

The Red start button will be divided into 4 buttons (up/down/right/left arrows?), the 3 buttons on the right as is (but moved down a bit), and two buttons in the lower middle.    On the upper middle will maybe be a CSS logo.

Design

We decided that everyone should look at several web sites to get ideas for the design of our web site and bring them in the office when you find something you like. We were thinking about having a screen shot of the game on the main page behind the controller instead of just having it blue.  Another thing that we thought would be cool is to have easter eggs - where a user could accidentally click on a hidden link and a character from the game would run across the screen.

Headings

Other

We will have a definitions page so that when someone is reading text and they come upon a word such as C++ or OpenGL they can click on the word and see a definition. Possibly this will be a tooltip.  We will also have a sources page of where we got all of our information - both to help readers of the site and also to make sure that we give credit where credit is due.  On each page there will be a "Books" area where a reader can use as further research on the specific topic of the page (books that we would recommend)

I will do a template page for all our pages and will put everyones text into the templates.

Tony finished the glossary and it's working great.  Everyone just has to make the definitions to enter into the glossary.

We have abandoned the goal to do usability testing for lack of time.

Here are the elements we still need completed:

Education

Internships

Skills

Art: Claymation, Concept Drawing

Graphics: Level Design

Management: Project, Financial/Business/SQA

Music: Design, Engineering, Sound Effects

Writing/Creativity: Concept Design/Storyboard

For Starters

Change to fit template, put all correct links and info in

Redo bottom navbar to fit style

Tools

Engines

Languages: DirectX, OpenGL

Software Packages: Development tools (other than graphics)

Main Page

Controller to be finished

Screenshot

Transparent Gifs

Change Background

Put in code to bring up the transparent gifs on mouseover

Definitions Database

Definitions from each page (and links put in on that page to point to the definition)

Other

Top Tabs